Research skills for HDR students

Developing effective and efficient research skills early in your candidature will set you up for success. These skills will help you plan your research, stay on track with your progress and write your thesis.

Overview and planning

Spending some time planning your thesis and its structure will help you to address the requirements of each section while still ensuring your thesis is cohesive as a whole. You need to be aware of the expectations of theses by publication, originality, literature reviews, writing up results and relating your findings to research literature.

Make sure you refer to our page on preparing your thesis for specific information on correct referencing and thesis presentation, including title and abstract requirements, using an editor and authorship attribution statements. You can also find workshops and training that can develop your research and writing skills, or complete our free, short unit 'Managing your research' in the Open Learning Environment.

Planning

Before you start your research, think about your general approach. Are you engaged in theory development or theory testing? Does your discipline have a particular approach to research? What research methods are required?

Time management

Effective time management is essential when producing a thesis.

You need to create a timetable for the major steps involved in the research process. This should include:

You will also need to work out a regular schedule for meeting with your supervisor. This gives you the opportunity to discuss your research progress, raise any issues or concerns and get feedback from you supervisor.

You may find that a study buddy will help you keep on track with your timetable. You could have daily or weekly check-in meetings where you share what you’ve done since you last spoke, and list your top priorities for the day or week.

Reading

When reading, it’s important to be systematic. Keep track of what you read with basic bibliographic information and brief notes. Try to build a comprehensive reference list as you go, for example using Endnote, rather than leaving it until the end.

You could also use strategies such as a synthesis grid to give you a ‘big picture overview’ of the readings you’re doing. Find out how to create a synthesis grid in Developing and supporting an argument (pdf, doc 127KB). Or you could divide your readings into core works, directly related non-core readings, and indirectly related non-core readings.

Website feedback

Thank you

Your feedback has been sent.

Sorry there was a problem sending your feedback. Please try again

You should only use this form to send feedback about the content on this webpage – we will not respond to other enquiries made through this form. If you have an enquiry or need help with something else such as your enrolment, course etc you can contact the Student Centre.